


to those who come knocking

by raumdeuter



Series: team spirit [4]
Category: Football RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Rivers of London Fusion, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-30
Updated: 2016-09-30
Packaged: 2018-08-18 15:15:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8166499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raumdeuter/pseuds/raumdeuter
Summary: Everyone knows you can't draw exclusively on your own magic during a match. You need--well. Everyone knows. It's why they play for you. It's why you're chosen.(It's why you leave.)





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [doubtthestars](https://archiveofourown.org/users/doubtthestars/gifts).



> set during today's match, schalke 04 3-1 rb salzburg
> 
> title from "the tower" by vienna teng

In the end it isn't even a particularly well-executed spell. It can't be, when the threat of relegation is already looming so large over all of them. Everyone knows you can't draw exclusively on your own magic during a match; the net effect would be like trying to knock down a castle gate with a toothpick. You need--well. Everyone knows. It's why they play for you. It's why you're chosen.

(It's why you leave.)

Benni does it anyway: reaches deep inside, curls his fists around his own weary loyalty, tears it out of himself. Offers it up, battered and grass-stained and fluttering like a mockery of a living thing--

\--and the pitch answers in a pass that becomes a lob; it answers in a fumbling, awkward mess of a goal, a dozen pairs of hands and feet clawing upward, ever upward, and it's barely enough, it's hardly enough: but the pitch answers him, and him alone, and it is enough, after all.

Here is the secret he knows, the secret Manu would have known, if he'd learned to stay: it gets easier with time.


End file.
